Thursday, December 6, 2012

Purgatory Now? Or Later? Do you want to be well?



The following is a compilation of many ideas, very few of which are my own original thoughts. I am much indebted to the teaching of some wonderful priests on such spiritual mysteries & realities.

I personally like to call Purgatory, ‘God’s Mercy in Action’. Purgatory is one of God’s greatest merciful gifts. The Church teaches that “those who die in God’s grace and friendship and are perfectly purified live forever with Christ” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, # 1023). So there are two conditions for our Heavenly residence… that we are 1) in God’s grace & friendship and 2) that we are perfectly purified. How many of those who die in God’s grace & friendship will also be ‘perfectly purified’? That means freedom from all attachment to sin, from all inordinate desires, relationships, habits, emotions, etc. I’m thinking you are thinking what I’m thinking - I don’t know if I even know anyone that fits all that criteria! Fortunately, our all-knowing and all-merciful God knows this. He knows that while many of us will die as His loving friends, very few of us will be ‘perfectly purified’ here on earth. Thus, He created Purgatory - the place in which those “who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified” (CCC #1030) go to become worthy of God’s Kingdom; to “achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven” (CCC #1030). He loves us and desires us so much that even if we die imperfect, but sincerely love Him, He still wants us. So He created a place where we can be made ready, rather than be separated from Him - talk about love & mercy!

This being said… if we really contemplate our lives and the ways - not where we commit sin deliberately cutting ourselves off from God - but the ways that our lives are disordered in a way that prevents us from loving God as He should be loved, and even as we desire to love Him, we can see how much purification needs to be done to be worthy of Heaven. Even those who live their lives in way that only exudes holiness, have things to deal with. We all have inordinate desires and attachments. We say that we love God above all things, but oftentimes, we really don’t. There are other things, people, and activities that we frequently put before God. Thus the proper order becomes out of order. God - at least for that moment - isn’t in the #1 spot, at the top of the list. In all things, He ALWAYS needs to be FIRST; all the time. Being perfectly purified means that we desire nothing else than to love God and be united to Him. This doesn’t mean that we spend the rest of our lives in the chapel and don’t see or talk to anyone else or do anything else, but that in all things, we first love God and live so as to love Him and honor Him - always.

Now, God does give us the grace to work out at least some of our purification here, so as to spend less time separated from Him in Purgatory. The question is, are we going to be open & cooperate with this grace here & now, or not? He often uses suffering in our lives to help purify us, to make us humble, to make us more dependent on Him. If we see suffering as the redemptive and sanctifying gift that it is and cooperate with it, God can work in us through it. Much of the time, there are still at least some of those interior strongholds, struggles, attachments, etc. that are keeping us from fully loving God. In order to deal with all of these, we have to let Him in and be willing to go through the process of detaching and re-ordering our interior, purifying our love for God. The benefit of working out our disordered-ness here vs. in Purgatory, is that it helps us to draw nearer to God and to grow in our love for Him so that we can, in this life, get closer to loving Him as He should be loved. Isn’t this the goal of the Christian life? The greatest commandment? To love God with our whole heart, soul, mind, & strength? (Mark 12:30)

To allow the Lord to begin purifying us here takes trust in Him. It’s hard to relinquish control and let Him take over and strip us of those things that keep us from deeper communion with Him. But it’s worth it. If you are having a hard time even wanting to let go, to detach & reorder your life, be patient. It’s okay. We are all a work-in-progress. None of us perfectly trusts Him or is perfectly surrendered, so don’t think you’re the only one struggling. Just ask God to give you the grace & He will give it to you when you are ready. Just take one step at a time. He will bring us healing when it’s the right time and when we are ready. Jesus asks each of us the same question that He asks the paralytic in the Gospel…. “Do you want to be made well?” (John 5:6) Do you want to be healed, to be made whole, to be freed? Why would Jesus even ask such a seemingly silly question!? Doesn’t everyone want to be healed? Yes, and no. Jesus asks this question because it means, ‘if I heal you, if I make you well, if I make you whole, your life will be drastically different. Everything will change. Are you okay with this? Do you trust Me?’ He will not force Himself on us. He is the perfect gentleman. He offers us His arm, and we have the choice to link ours with His or not. He doesn’t grab it. The choice is up to us. He won’t intervene if we don’t want to Him to intervene. And oftentimes, we are so attached to the way things are right now and afraid of the changes that would come if we let Him in to purify us, that we don’t want to be made well. We are miserable, yet are under this ridiculous illusion that we are too comfortable in our misery to want to be changed! 

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to go through this life as a friend of God and dying in His grace without at least trying to love Him to the capacity that He created me to love Him. Thus, whatever Purgatory time we can shave off here on earth, we should want to do it! The more we work out our salvation here, the less time we have to spend separated from God after our death and we get to Heaven quicker. 

We should desire to be able to love God to the degree that He created us to love Him. But, we can’t love God as He ought to be loved if we are holding onto other things, people, even emotions; they all have a hold on us. How can we open our arms to give & receive the Lord’s love, if we are bound by our own emotions and desires as if we were in a straight jacket?

 “Do you want to be well?” It can - and often does - take time to answer that question. It takes ups & downs, feelings of hopelessness and helplessness. We usually have to get to a rock-bottom place before we are ready to be lifted up. I know for me personally, it has taken me years of agony to tell Jesus (very recently), through a stream of tears, “Yes, Jesus. I really do want to be well.” Because I got tired of feeling like I woke up every day just to get the life sucked out of me; tired not loving God as He should be loved and doing nothing about it. I finally cried out - despite the fear of change, willing to let change happen - wanting to be made well, tired of the interior misery day after day. I know there will be more times and circumstances that He will ask me the question again, and I hope I can answer ‘yes’ more promptly, but the humanity in me will undoubtedly engage in a struggle until I have the grace to realize that there is nothing more that I want than for Jesus to make me well.

Monday, December 3, 2012

The Battle Is On

The results of our presidential election were unfortunate... and as much as our flesh doesn't want to admit it, the persecution of the Church is imminent.
Our religious freedoms are already being 'whittled away' (to quote Archbishop Chaput), and it’s only going to continue. Religious Liberty is quickly disappearing in our country which no longer has room for God. Christians are being be persecuted, and the more our rights are stripped, the more persecution we will endure. The Church is entering Her purification.
The fervency of our prayers and sacrifices leading up to the election, need to continue. We have to keep praying & sacrificing for our country - for the sake of our children, our family, our priests, our Church, for the salvation of souls. Now, more than ever, do we need to live a life of prayer & sacrifice. The window of Mercy is closing... we have to pay for the sins of our nation. And we need to do all that we can to strengthen & prepare ourselves, our friends, & our families; to mitigate as much as possible in a spirit of contrition and reparation.

"If you are not willing to die for your faith, you will not persevere." (Servant of God Fr. John Hardon to a local Michigan priest)

The freedom to worship as we do will not always be. We take advantage of our ability to choose which one out of six Sunday Masses we can go to, when one day we might just be lucky to have one Mass in a clandestine place. Nothing in this life is certain; what we think will always be available to us, will not always be at our disposal. That’s true for everything - our money, our possessions, the Sacraments of the Church. We need to cherish what we have in a spirit of detachment, because things will not always be 'just-so'. We need to spend time fortifying ourselves with the sacraments while we are still free to receive them; to prepare ourselves, to strengthen ourselves, so that our faithfulness to God will not grow weary in times of hardship. We need to have a deeper personal conversion and begin reform in our own lives. Everything that we say & do needs to revolve around One Thing - Jesus Christ. Our prayers and sacrifices need to be redoubled, because it is through our prayers and sacrifices that we will change the events of human history. Now is the time.

"Prayer joined to sacrifice constitutes the most powerful force in human history."


-Blessed John Paul II

Yet in all of this, we need not have a spirit of fear, but a spirit of courage. The Lord God will take care of us and our reward is Himself; it is His Kingdom. We are pilgrims on a journey toward the Beatific Vision. We shouldn't get too comfortable here - we aren't staying! We are living here on this earth as the Church Militant, living & fighting for His Kingdom. "For we are not contending against flesh & blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness..." (Ephesians 6:12). But we are not alone in this fight. We are united to the Church Triumphant in Heaven, and the Church Suffering in Purgatory. We fight the good fight with the aid of our brothers and sisters who are interceding for us before the throne of God.
We are not a people of fear, but of hope. An 18-year old young catholic in southeast Michigan opened his Bible the morning after the election and began to read, in search of some consolation or explanation from God for our country. He read from the Book of Baruch and found that five times in this book God says, “…they are not gods, do not fear them…” (Baruch 6:16, 23, 29, 65, 69*) and five additional times, “…they are not gods…” (Baruch 6:40, 44, 52, 56, 72*). We have nothing to fear, for only God has the ultimate power. Though there is much evil done through people and evil spirits in this world, the Lord tells us not to fear because ‘they are not gods’! Do not be afraid!

Furthermore, battle heroes are not timid - they are courageous. They go forward in confidence for the defense of their kingdom. We - called to be battle heroes of the Church Militant - are commissioned to fight with courage, with confidence, in defense of our Kingdom - the Kingdom of God. We already know who wins this fight! We are part of the triumphant army, but the war still needs to be fought and Jesus Christ and His Immaculate Mother will win. "In the end, My Immaculate Heart will Triumph" (Our Lady at Fatima). We are the body of Christ, so our Triumph is His Triumph as long as we are united to Him. The weapons of this battle are spiritual weapons, the greatest of which are the Holy Mass, praying the daily Rosary, wearing the Scapular, and receiving sacramental confession. Let us arm ourselves well that we will have Christ's power to disarm the principalities and powers of darkness. May God grant us the grace to remain united with Him in all things so that when the war is over, we will live triumphant with Him - the battle heroes of the Church Militant.




*Bible verse references are according to the Revised Standard Version (RSV). Verse numbers differ slightly in the New American Standard and other translations.